opinion, give me the pros and cons of...

[Ysgarran]

I'm one of those who take a published world and then
take it in my own direction. My longest running campaign
is FR but it diverged from the standard lines with the
original boxed edition of FR.

The city-states of the North have been forced into
uneasy confederacy long ago by the threats of both
Hell-gate Keep and the Orcs of the Spineworld. Operatives
from Hellgate Keep have been trying to encourage the formation
of an Orc Horde to weaken the Northen Confederacy so that
they can sweep in and crush the weakened participants.

The history stays the same but I think everyone should
feel free to change the future of the world that they are
running. I know I feel a bit disappointed if I can't change
the world I'm running if I'm 'locked' into someone elses
view. It can limit the usefullness of future supplements but
I think it is a worthwhile penalty pay.

later,
Ysgarran.

___________________
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http://www.storymania.com/cgibin/sm2/smshowtitlebox.cgi?category=novels&page=1&title=JohnnyReb

 

[Fenes 2]

I currently DM 2 campaigns in the FR, and both are modified to suit my taste. I just have to tell the players sometimes that it is my campaign, not a strict by the book setting, and that no one should expect to know more than the DM. If you use the FR and want it tweaked, just make it clear to the players that you will not use every NPC as they see it, and that your portayal of the world and the NPCs has priority over the books - especially over some out-of-print 2E material or novel.

(Avoiding the "big name NPCs" as much as possible works also wonder - if they never meet Artemis entreri the pcs cannot kill him and the players cannot complain about his characerisation.)

 

[Henry]

Tell you a little secret about my campaign world.

There are places in my homebrew campaign world with the following names:

Tenser's Rift, Bruenor's Port, and a city my players don't know about on the other side of the world called R'lyeh.

Dimensional Travel?

Nah. It's not possible.

My advice? Screw with your players. Name a forgotten God or Deity-level hero in your Homebrew something like Drizzt, or Bigby. Watch 'em go nuts when they hear about the great feats this hero did in antiquity.

Better yet? Take one of the PLAYERS' characters' names or a corruption thereof, and introduce that as a great hero. Later, introduce time travel and give the players the chance to actually BE those heroes their characters heard about when growing up.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

For years I used the published settings, just tweaking them here and there to make them my own. I ran WoG for several years, but eventually wanted a change. So we used the Realms for quite a while, but eventually the sheer volume of available material became disconcerting. Between the novels and accessories, it was becoming common for my players to know more about the overall setting than I did.

Nowadays, I focus strictly on my own setting, for which I spent several years developing the material, but I like to use 'drag-and-drop' published adventures, weaving them carefully (and, I hope, skillfully) into my overall story. Additionally, my primary campaign dipped into the Planes for a time, and the PC's even visited the Realms for an adventure or two. They even picked up a new PC while they were there, and though he eventually accompanied them back to their own world, he always thought of his own homeland back in Faerun as 'home.'

Can make for some fascinating possibilities.

 

[Mercule]

Running from a published world:

1) It has a greater sense of depth and history
2) Players are more familiar with the world
3) Less work
4) you can talk about it easier with other people

Running your own world
1) You can design it to fit exactly what you want
2) you can change things easier and players won't complain as much when you do
3) players can read mor esupllements then you

Meanwhile, I'd say:
Published world:
1) Players can be more familiar with it
2) Less work
3) Standard rules apply
4) More static: Don't void the future books/PCs can't be king of Cormyr

Home-brew:
1) Greater sense of depth and history
2) Design to taste
3) Future is wide open -- go ahead and destroy/build countries
4) _LOTS_ of work -- my 20 yr old world still has so much to do
5) Potential for lots of house rules

Personally, I think Home-brew beats Published hands down. Right now, though, I'm running a Greyhawk game because of the whole time-investment thing. I'd converted my game world to use the Aria system and I'm going through a lot of pain reconciling myself to D&D magic again.

 

[evil_rmf]

rathor-

I think you pretty much covered it on your initial post. My advice on a homebrew is to give up on the idea of it being ever completely "finished".

What I've done in my homebrew is drawn out the land, put in mountains, rivers, etc... Decided on general populace and sprinkled it around, leaving lots of wild areas. Then I detailed some ( I think 4) parts, and wrote up generalities about the rest.

The nations/territories that are generalized have macro-details like population, economy, for of rule, and a few words about the general disposition of the inhabitants. That way, when things happen that can effect those areas, I have some idea of what to do on the fly. Now the fun part is that every once in a while, I as a friend or two who play DnD, but are not in my game to do something random with one of the generalized areas. I mean things like: invade their neighbor, have a famine, discover a new religion or major artifact., etc...

I then figure out how the populace in that area would react, then ripple the effect all the way through the world to where the PCs are. that way, i have a reason for Hill Giants to move into the area, for example. (they were run out by stone giants, who were in turn fleeing from a group of adventurers bent on killing them).

Now, on the pre-packaged side of things, it seems like whatever adventure or supplement that "has just come out" is almost always exactly the opposite of what I need. Maybe it's dumb luck, I dunno. If you want to go back and get a bunch of 1E/2E stuff and convert to d20, then you can pick and choose. However, that seems like a lot of work and may cancel out the benefit of the pre-packaged world.

I find it best to beg/borrow/steal from published works to tweak and place in my own setting when needed. It minimizes the time spent on the creative process (though it still can be lots of work to convert if it is not your current system). For example, I've dropped Lankhmar into my world, and I plan on getting Freeport when I need another major city.

Wow. sorry to ramble.

 

[Number47]

I can't believe nobody mentioned one of the best advantages of homebrew, that you get to save yourself a couple hundred dollars. For some of us, that is a very important consideration!

 

[Celebrim]

I've yet to see a published world that actually saved me time in creating a campaign. Most of what is published is so utterly useless that it exists only to provoke thoughts. I typically don't need thoughts provoked, so I don't need someone else to kick start a campaign with ideas like 'there are orcs in these woods', 'this kingdom is having political strife', or NPC stats or variations on that theme.

Ideally, a published world setting would be utterly unordered. Simply hundreds of general seven sentence NPC's with statblocks, hundreds of businesses and establishments wrote out to a half page or two, hundreds of basic maps of buildings and small villages - and NO cities, NO countries, NO continents, NO history, and NO big plots. Everything would be available on an accompaning CD so that I could search, sort, cut and paste and concatenate as necessary. That would save me work. Continents, cities, big plots, etc. are the easy part. Supplements would be things like, 'Laws and Customs', 'Songs and Chants', 'Books, Art, and Literature', 'Dangerous Places' (a collection of 100 15 room dungeons in generalized locations), and so forth. Each would also simply be a source book of finished ideas to be cut out and used were they are appropriate in your campaign. That would save me work, because it would reduce by 50% the ammount of work required to fill in the blank spaces as they appeared.

But published RPG settings just cost me money and don't offer me anything, so I don't by them.

Homebrews are almost always less superficial than published settings, with more history, more imagination, and so forth. And published settings are themselves generally based on 'homebrews' that probably have far more depth than is ever published - well, FR be an exception to that rule, because it never had alot of depth until the fans started playing with it.

I always get the impression with a published setting that to truly enjoy it, you have to have the guy that created it be the DM.

 

[Voadam]

The realms to new world will be easy to work, with wonky malfunctioning ancient gates in many places.

Take a working one, have the pcs go through either exploring or on a minor mission, then have something happen to screw up the magic, a magical attack, the sundering of a rod of wonder, etc.

 

[rathor]

...

you guys have helped me a lot... truely... they will find a magic device that will teleport them to a random location, and be forced to use it to avoid a TPK.